


Tell Me I'm Awake

by Looming



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 03:48:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19265296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Looming/pseuds/Looming
Summary: “I’m already in your bed,” is all Chloe can think to say as she tightens her grip on the sheets. They’re nice. Or, new, at least. No wonder Rachel doesn’t want her bleeding on them.“You’reonmy bed, smartass. And you’re deflecting.”“Yeah… well…” Chloe starts. Rachel doesn’t let her finish.





	Tell Me I'm Awake

**Author's Note:**

> This thing is kind-of-sort-of-vaguely related to my big amberpricefield fic, [Feathers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17098667). Feel free to slide it somewhere into that universe if you want! 
> 
> And if not, you absolutely do not need to read that thing first.

A flash of pain shoots through Chloe’s cheek, and she winces, flinching immediately away.

At her side, Rachel lets loose a long-suffering sigh.

The sort of sigh that says one of her huge – warranted, _always_ warranted – frowns is ready and waiting. And when Chloe finally risks a glance in her direction, she sees one of those frowns looking back at her just as clearly as she feels Rachel slap her on the back of the head, the gesture full of understanding even with all that frustration swimming through the rest of her.

“Chlo, you _have_ to stop being a baby or we’re never getting this blood off of you,” she says.

“Maybe,” Chloe bites out, angrier than she feels by enough feet to be yards. “I don’t want it cleaned up.”

But she relaxes. She goes soft and pliant in Rachel’s hands. She looks to the side and focuses on the room. On the flickering candles and the familiar dim light of those dollar store glow-in-the-dark stars they put up one night when they were just the right side of too high to function. The moonlight leaking in through the sides of the window’s heavy curtains with every stray breeze. She lets Rachel return to work swiping the dried flakes away from the edges of the cut.

Even if she can’t quite stop Rachel’s irritation from continuing on uninterrupted. “Then you’re sleeping on the floor – ”

“Go to hell.”

“ – because I’m not letting you into my bed if you keep whining about this. I know you’ve dealt with worse. _I’ve_ given you worse.” She grips hard at Chloe’s jaw with one hand, forcing her face into what must be a more convenient position as she wets the towel back down with her other. She clicks her tongue in frustration at whatever she sees, whatever she finds, but Chloe hears it at clear as day: the subtle softening of her voice. The way it flutters and crackles in her throat as she pushes out the words, “You’re _here_ for something worse.”

“I’m already in your bed,” is all Chloe can think to say as she tightens her grip on the sheets. They’re nice. Or, new, at least. No wonder Rachel doesn’t want her bleeding on them.

“You’re _on_ my bed, smartass. And you’re deflecting.”

“Yeah… well…” Chloe starts. Rachel doesn’t let her finish.

“No _yeah well,_ Chlo. This is a tiny little baby cut and you’re going to let me finish wiping it off so we can slap a band-aid on it and finally get to fixing your busted-ass leg for the second time this month.”

Chloe tries to grunt.

She _tries._ It escapes as more of a cough. And that cough quickly turns into another until she’s stuck dealing with an entire fit of them, each one pouring out through the moment of vulnerability she created. “Fine,” she tacks roughly onto the end before pulling in a single, massive breath. “Leg’s fine though.”

Rachel glares at her.

So Chloe glares back. And she follows Rachel’s eyes down her knee. It’s swollen. Pretty badly, actually. But it isn’t as bad as she expected it might be. She avoided looking for this long because she figured that somewhere along the way it would’ve ballooned up to twice its normal size. But it didn’t. It’s not that bad. And she walked across town on the thing. So, you know, she would know. Leg’s fine.

Rachel pokes at it. Once. Refusing to break eye contact like she thinks it might make a point and she’s only waiting to see Chloe realize as much.

There is – at the very least – one tiny, miniscule, fraction of a fraction of a second where Rachel’s finger on her skin doesn’t hurt.

And then comes the next.

And every muscle in Chloe’s body from her jaw to her toes tenses up, her eyes watering and her breath crushing itself to nothing underneath the strain. The pain comes dangerously close to whiting out her vision, and she dimly registers the feeling of buckling forward and into herself. But she claws back from the brink before it happens. Not tonight. Not after this long.

She forces her eyes back open.

The first thing she makes out through the sea of blurred vision and tears is Rachel, absolutely guilt-ridden and heartbroken and probably ready to claim that all of this is her fault. She’s cupping Chloe’s face between her palms, humming, whispering, cooing soothing little nothings to help bring Chloe back down because the feeling of her hands and the sound of her voice _always_ brings Chloe back down, even when she can’t understand a single word that Rachel is saying.

So. Leg’s not fine, then.

She takes a slow, trembling breath. Blinks the world back into focus.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel says, so quiet that Chloe almost misses it. “That was too far.”

It wasn’t.

She deserved that.

Chloe shakes her head. She clasps both of her hands softly over Rachel’s and gives her best attempt at a smirk. Though even without looking, she can tell it only goes as far as a grimace. “It wasn’t. I deserved that.”

For one beat, and then another, Rachel seems like she might disagree. And then she cracks a smile of her own. And a short laugh. Both of them bright, and happy, and full of love.

“You did,” she says, pressing an unhurried kiss to Chloe’s hairline. Lingering too long and then even longer. “Now come on, let me finish up already. I’m _tired._ ”

This time, Chloe doesn’t fight back. She lets Rachel clean the blood on her cheek. And the blood on her chin. And her shoulder. And her arm. And everything littering her knuckles.

She got a good few hits in before going down this time, thinking maybe it might motivate Stepfuck to think twice before throwing another fit.

It won’t.

Obviously.

Because it never does.

But. You never know.

Not much room for anything else but hope on nights like these. Reality can be patient and wait until the morning to ruin everything.

“Alright baby, lay back for me,” Rachel says softly, one hand firmly on Chloe’s sternum like a guiding weight ready to follow her into the pillows. Chloe obeys the order without a word, silent as she goes and as Rachel arranges herself on her knees, tucked between Chloe’s thighs.

“Ready?” She asks, holding the problem leg firmly in her hands, one palm on her calf and the other on her ankle, ready to straighten it out slowly into her lap. Chloe nods.

They make it about a quarter of the way there before something in Chloe’s body tenses, and before she can stop herself, she’s blurting out fast enough for the words to blend together, “Wait, wait wait wait, say mean things to me again.”

Rachel blinks.

She holds Chloe’s leg frozen in her hands.

“It,” Chloe says, and then laughs when she realizes what she sounds like. “It was distracting me. You were distracting me.”

A small moment passes as Chloe meets Rachel’s gaze, smiling and coughing out stray bursts of laughter weak enough to be almost silent and still strong enough to get her eyes watering despite it all.

And then Rachel smiles, too.

“…How did I never know you were into that sort of thing?” She jokes.

“Into… _Oh_ – oh, fuck you.”

“You can try, but I’m not sure how far you’ll get with only one leg,” Rachel answers without missing a beat. She squeezes a hand around Chloe’s ankle, scratching lazily at the back of her calf with the other.

“I take it back; this isn’t what I wanted.”

“Like, okay, so, you let me undress you when you showed up and everything.”

“We are _not_ doing this, Rachel.”

“Had to untie your _boots_ for you, and take off your _pants_ for you. I feel like I should’ve realized sooner!”

“Fucking – _Rachel._ ”

“See, now, if you has _asked_ – ”

“ _I didn’t._ ”

“ – I would’ve said,” Rachel slides one hand effortlessly up to Chloe’s thigh and pulls slow and hard at her leg. Pain blooms out from her knee the instant she does, followed by the swift, and wet, and absolutely _nauseating_ pop of tendons shifting against bone and bone snapping back into place. “We could find a much more pleasant way to distract you.”

Chloe arches her back, sucking in a sharp breath in answer, and in the very same moment, Rachel glides wordlessly forward to straddle her waist, repeating the words _I’m here_ like a mantra, fingers running steady paths up and down her stomach and her chest and helping to bring her back down.

“I’m here,” she says, palms on Chloe’s shoulders.

“I’m here,” she says, reaching down to take Chloe’s hands into her own.

“I’m right here.”

Rachel keeps going all the way up until Chloe’s grip on reality returns, and their hands flex together, squeeze in the matching beats of silent conversation. Until Chloe has enough air in her lungs to husk out a raspy, “Fucking Christ in heaven, you are such an _asshole._ ”

And Rachel cracks a smile. Because of course she cracks a smile.

“Better?” She asks, leaning hesitantly, slowly forward.

It is. She is. But Chloe isn’t in the mood for slow. She tugs Rachel down, pulls her close, and holds her tight.

“Yeah,” she says off the tail end of a chuckle, pressing kiss after kiss after kiss to the top of Rachel’s head. “Yeah. Better.”

“Good. Now, do me a favor?” Rachel asks.

“Anything.”

Rachel nuzzles herself just slightly closer. Tightens her grip just a little bit further. Like she genuinely doesn’t know what kind of answer might be waiting at the end of her question. “Don’t even think about walking on that leg until I get a chance to check on it tomorrow morning, okay?”

And, Chloe _wants_ to tell her that she would never. She _wants_ to tell Rachel not to worry. But the reality is that last few times they’ve ended up together like this, Chloe disappeared before the morning and without paying any mind to her still-healing injuries. Because running from somewhere David lives to somewhere David works felt like the farthest thing from a safe decision.

The reality is that this has never happened so often before.

The reality is, that Rachel is probably terrified. Because Chloe is terrified, too. Because breaking or dislocating anything after one of David’s episodes usually signals the _end_ of their troubles for at least long enough that Chloe can bounce back to normal. At least long enough that all of her bones make it back to where they need to be and at least long enough that they remember how to be effortlessly happy and carefree again. How to stop being scared again.

And David trying to break the same leg, in the same way, in the same place, in such a small amount of time, may as well be the world’s largest red flag stitched together with hundreds of smaller red flags and waving inches away from their faces.

But… she’s not dead yet.

She’s still here.

Tonight, Chloe is still here. And Rachel _wants_ her here. And maybe that’s all that matters. Maybe she’s allowed _one_ night of peace.

So, Chloe nods, and she kisses Rachel again.

“I’ll stay.”

Rachel’s exhaustion; all of that tension and silence and worry leaves in her very next breath. And she presses her lips to the dip of Chloe’s throat.

“Thank you,” she whispers, kissing the spot again and again and again. “ _Thank you, Chloe._ ”

“Yeah. But only because you’re cute, you know?”

Rachel sticks her tongue out, which, given the position she’s in, ends up feeling a lot more like she’s lapping at Chloe’s neck and searching for the spot where she’s most ticklish than anything that might translate into an answer. And Chloe can’t help it. She laughs. She laughs, and she laughs, and she yanks Rachel up until she’s the one at _Rachel’s_ throat, playing her like a finely tuned instrument of giggles and squeaks and squeals.

**Author's Note:**

> I Love, Them,


End file.
